The latest propaganda ploy of the reactionary Right is to blame President Joe Biden for surpassing Trump in Covid deaths. Merely typing those words is nearly enough to make me retch, but alas, there they were in today's Wall Street Journal lead editorial ( 'Biden's Covid Death Milestone', p. A14), writing:
"Covid deaths this year have now surpassed the toll in 2020 with 350,000 since Inauguration Day. It would seem that Mr. Biden has done no better than Donald Trump in defeating Covid despite the benefit of vaccines, better therapies, and more clinical experience. The left politicized Covid by holding Mr. Trump responsible for a disease that was always going to be hard to defeat.
“If the president had done his job, had done his job from the beginning, all the people would still be alive,” Mr. Biden said last fall. That was as false as anything Mr. Trump ever said, but most journalists and experts agreed with the basic premise: Mr. Trump had blood on his hands. The world’s top medical journals called for Mr. Trump’s defeat.."
The Journal at least admits that Trump "did downplay the virus" -- as he admitted to Bob Woodward in his book 'RAGE". But he did lots more than that to set the initial Covid death toll toward the half million mark. That is, mocking the use of masks and even in the White House itself. This despite masks being the primary means - with social distancing - to halt the virus spread.
By contrast, Joe Biden was indeed all in trying to halt the Covid (Delta variant) spread by encouraging as many Americans to get vaccinated as possible by July 4th - so we could achieve "independence". Assisting in the vaccine rollout efforts themselves Biden earlier enlisted the National Guard to help in delivering the shots, given the shortage of qualified medical technicians. He also had Dr. Anthony Fauci spreading the word on the need to get vaccinated to avoid a new surge.
Very little of that worked, and we now know whom to blame, and it isn't Biden! He isn't the one responsible for millions (like Aaron Rodgers) opting for dopey and useless alternatives like ivermectin, e.g. instead of getting the vaccine.
The chief propagandist who relentlessly hammered the vaccines efficacy and questioned them, leading to 100 million Americans still not fully vaccinated today? Tucker Carlson, who has now built his media image further by turning the murdering vigilante Kyle Rittenhouse into another "hero" of the Right.
Focus now on the benighted WSJ editorial which goes on to whine: "Mr. Biden famously promised “to shut down the virus, not the country,” and he accused Mr. Trump of having “no plan.”
But let's be clear here: in making this promise Biden was assuming (in June) a basic intelligence and level of rationality for most citizens. Thanks to Carlson and the relentless lies and propaganda from FOX - which too many imbibed- that didn't materialize. The FOX renegades and especially Tucker Carlson, were determined to use the Red state bodies piled up like cordwood to try to bring Biden and the Dems down and "own the libs" in the process, e.g.
As blogger Amanda Marcotte pointed out back in September:
"There's a lot of reasons conservatives cite for this refusal to vaccinate, though ultimately it all boils down to a desire to "own the liberals." But a lot of this pettiness is intertwined with a right-wing bravado. To be blunt, white privilege has long shielded many conservatives from the concept of facing consequences for their actions
Beyond that look to the antics of Carlson and his FOXite fellow liars who seeded doubts by using clever "questioning" tactics, thereby to pile up deaths en route to power. For example, exposing his cynical tactic in one Sept. broadcast, blabbing:
"Maybe it doesn`t work and they`re simply not telling you that. This is lunacy. We should not go along with it. It has nothing to do with medicine. It is a terrifying precedent that if we let solidify, we will deeply, deeply regret. This is not about COVID, this is about the existence of rational decision-making in this country and personal autonomy."
So we see what he and the extremist Traitor Right has sought to do with this barrage of blarney: to use the dead bodies of red staters to advance political power. If enough Covid dead could be amassed then Trump could not be uniquely blamed. He'd be no different from Joe Biden - which is essentially the thesis of the WSJ editorial. Chris Hayes was well into this in his Sept. 28th show, also how the FOXites are making money from it, noting:
"This has nothing to do with medicine. That`s what they`re saying. It`s a liberal plot, right? The libs are trying to shove it down their throats. It`s tyranny. Why would a movement do that? Well, a big reason is that it sells. And the people selling it do not care how many people get sick or die."
Adding:
'Today, the Intercept reported on hacked data they received showing that a network of right-wing health care providers have made millions of dollars selling debunked COVID treatments like the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine and the parasite drug Ivermectin. That group who call themselves America`s frontline doctors has closed ties to a network of right-wing efforts to undermine public health during the pandemic ....One Fox News insider succinctly described the anti-COVID mandate segments and vaccine-resistant commentary as "great for ratings."
This despite the fact that Fox News has a vaccine requirement itself. Their own human resources department said earlier this month 90 percent of full-time employees reported they are fully vaccinated after the company, wait for it, mandated everyone to report their vaccination status."
So follow this now: Carlson and his fellow Covid terrorist imps are using a double-edged sword on the dumb -as- nails red staters. Their two-pronged strategy entails: 1) Getting them to reject the vaccines - the only means to genuinely halt the spread of the virus, and 2) Deflecting them to useless alternatives like horse de-wormer which spikes ratings and brings in the moola. The FOXites and Murdoch empire get money while they rack up deaths on the way to showing Biden is no better at controlling Covid than Trump. Which is proven by the WSJ's disingenuous editorial, and of course, the WSJ is part of the Murdoch empire
This would be alarming on its own, for the health of our nation as well as its physical health, certainly as a new Covid variant (B.1.1.529) has emerged in South Africa. Where we go from here - as the nation approaches 800,000 dead from Covid - who knows? But one thing is for certain: Tucker Carlson and the WSJ (with its numerous anti-mask, anti-lockdown op-eds) are complicit in keeping the Covid death toll rising. They also will be to blame to keeping vaccination rates below what they need to be as we are likely soon threatened with this new (and possibly more deadly) variant.
Carlson himself deserves negative recognition as a prime Covid propagandist for spreading more vaccine lies than even the WSJ to keep the numbers of the unvaccinated high- and the virus mutating to new variants like B.1.1. 529. In that regard he can also be said to be the worst Covid terrorist, little different than if he was actually tossing Molotov cocktails into the homes of his delirious red state viewers.
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